


Scrapyard Remnants

by threesipsmore



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, just a little?, maybe kinda graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesipsmore/pseuds/threesipsmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eustass Kid is eleven when Killer confronts him in the scrapyard. He's fifteen when metal begins to tremble. He's seventeen when he decides that he doesn't want anyone else to see what's his. Somewhere between the numbers Killer decides Kid is going to become something great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scrapyard Remnants

**Author's Note:**

> Might be a little graphic? Like some scenes of violence.

Somewhere in the south there’s this scrapyard that the junkships hover about daily. Sometimes the kids will cull through the trash and remnants, picking the shiny from the murky. 

Killer likes to watch them, dangling his legs from the low cement wall that crescents the open yard. It’s nothing but the bones of old stoves and ship fragments and the sea. 

The breeze tugs at his hair and shirt, the sauce of last night’s loaf smudged at the hem. 

Killer, the kids called him. Killer, they dubbed him. 

He’d bitten the ear off of a city kid once, had spat it back out with red lips and they’d all screamed scrambling to get away. That boy, the one with the black shoes and pressed shirt, had tugged on his hair and Killer had snapped back like a feral animal.

Now they don’t bother him, but still they whisper. He’s a killer, that Killer. He eats brains and lives in a hole in the ground. 

Not too far from the truth. 

He did live in a little hovel close to the ground, battered tarps draped over old cement blocks. And he did eat brains in a metaphorical sense, in that he’d cursed the intellect those boys had thrown about and spat it back at them in blood and flesh. 

The adults would wonder after him, about the fifteen year old hoodlum with the bushy blonde head, sprouting from nowhere like an unwanted weed. They would pity him, if only to scorn him.

What they didn’t know was that he had a mother on the other side of town in a small clutter of mended shirts and cheap tailored suits. So sometimes Killer goes home, and she feeds him without a second glance, and then he returns to his hovel and forgets about her, just as she forgets him. 

He suspects she’d adopted the popular communal understanding of ‘Killer’.

But then again, he wasn’t the only demon in town.

Eustass Kid was a scroungy little brat, four years younger than himself with a mane of red and a smile that truly belonged to a killer.

Did he secretly have a mother too?

Killer wouldn’t know, watching him as he were right now.

Kid is down there digging through the rubble, cheeks smudged in rainwater oil and fingernails caked in rust.

He’s the only one left in the yard now, the sun bleeding out into the ocean as the city murmurs its final goodnights.

Kid should get out soon, or the gates will close him in and he’ll be stuck in the yard for the night. He could jump off into the ocean and swim around, but he’d be daring the rocks and carnivorous fish and all things human-hating.

Killer doesn’t think it’ll actually happen, not until he hears the familiar groan of old hinges, and he stares at that stupid kid, wondering if he even notices what’s happening. No one sleeps in the scrapyard, no one sane.

He finds himself wandering down the other side, feet digging into the sunken holes of the cement. And then he scurries in, those walls ever so slow.

He doesn’t give the kid a chance to be surprised, yanking on his arm.

“You stupid or something? Get out before you’re locked in!”

This kid has the gall just to glare over at him. “How about you get out?”

Killer huffs, glaring through a heavy curtain of bangs.

“You know the dogs come through here during the night, right? The starving ones.”

“Not anymore.”

That gives Killer pause. “What do you mean,” he says slowly.

“They were bothersome. So I got rid of them.”

Killer wets his lips.

The doors close behind them, bolted and sealed.

* * *

 

Eustass spends some of his nights in the yard, just digging and digging and digging. He shifts through the chaos of the city, never saying a word, just wiggling his nose and wiping at his chin. So Killer watches him, keeping an ear out for those dogs just in case.

They never do come, and Eustass never does stop until the sun breaks through the earth and he burrows himself into some old rags and sleeps. Killer watches him, before the gates open and he’s leaving.

* * *

 

Winter comes along and he sees Eustass again for the first time in a long time. He’s already gotten a bit bigger, his hair shaggier- though his baby fat still stubbornly clung to his cheeks. 

He sees Eustass again for the first time that winter, and some of those older kids are holding something above him, laughing as he growls and leaps for it.

It’s a little robot, a spring loose and an arm missing.

If they taunt him any further Eustass will no doubt try and take them on, though he’s a scroungy little brat with toothpick arms.

“Give it back.” Against his better judgement, Killer stands there between them, taller than Eustass but shorter than these street kids.

“The fuck are you?”

Killer sniffs. “Just give it back.”

The one with the toy looks back at his comrades, a grin plastered across his ugly face. “Not gonna happen, you furry little shit.”

Killer makes an annoyed sound, and, in retrospect, he shouldn’t have expected much from the situation. He gets the robot back, but they kick at him for a good five minutes before they throw it at him. He’d managed a good hit at first, but there was only so much his reputation could do.

There were four of them, all twice his height with double the incentive to hurt.

Eustass shuffles about behind him, and Killer can feel him hovering about, peering into his face as smaller fingers gingerly touch his neck.

He winces and Eustass jerks back.

The boy takes his robot and runs.

* * *

 

Eustass Kid is like a weed. 

He’s taller than Killer now, fourteen and a bit lean with these muscles that promise a bright future with some proper care and nurture.

He’s fourteen and he seems to remember Killer, peering down into his face as he sits there slumped against the cement wall.

“Someone beat you up?”

Yeah, they did. They found his little hovel. They decided they'd liked it. Killer’s pretty tough, but there were about three too many and Killer can only do so much.

Kid sniffs a bit, wiping at his nose thoughtfully and then he’s leaving.

Killer leans his head back, swallowing what he thinks is blood. He’d come all the way here, like he usually does, but he can’t climb the wall today and so he sits there.

* * *

 

Kid is fifteen when things get weird. 

Killer only knows because he’s up there watching him when shit begins to happen. Someone pulls at Kid, yanks him back real hard and then there’s a screw in his eye and he’s screaming, weeping blood, and Kid is scrambling back like he hadn’t expected it and Killer knows.

He knows what must’ve happened.

The metal trapped in the junk begins to tremble with Kid, and then all havoc breaks loose, the boy’s eyes wide in fear- Killer’s never seen so many people drop at once, haphazard amounts of rusty nails and old wenches protruding from their bodies.

Kid can’t seem to control it- Killer can’t stop watching.

It’s amazing.

He scrambles down to fetch him after things start to look a little dangerous on Kid’s end, and the boy is crying, though he’d never admit later.

“You have to calm down,” Killer whispers, “you have to control yourself.”

He puts a hand on his shoulder, and Kid jolts, eyes wide on him. 

* * *

 

Killer has this new little abode off near the edges of the city, out where the caves and the electric eels are. He takes Kid there, wraps him up and gives him some stale candy.

“Did you eat anything funny lately?”

Kid tries his damned hardest to crack the candy, though Killer doubts he can do it.

“The fuck is it to you if I did?”

Killer smiles at him from the other side.

“Because I think I know what happened.”

Kid just sucks on that obscenely large ball of candy, watching him before he’s looking around.

“Why do you live here if you got a ma?”

Killer stiffens. How did he know that?

“You’ve been following me?”

Kid snorts. “You’re not that important, just, I’ve seen you sometimes, in that house. I wouldn’t be living out here if I had a ma that fed me.”

Kid doesn’t know anything.

“You’re a devil fruit user,” Killer says instead. “You could do great things Kid, if you learned to control it. There’s books, I could get you some-“

“I don’t read.”

Killer huffs. “I can teach you-“

“No,” Kid sneers, “I mean, I _don’t_ read. I can do it you stupid oaf, I just don’t want to.”

Fucking little brat.

“Fine,” Killer relents, “then _I’ll_ research it.”

Kid shuffles out of that ratty old blanket, standing straight with a mean look to him, “What the fuck do you want with me, huh? I don’t need to be anything special, I just gotta be me. So just leave me to that.”

He leaves, and that’s when Killer decides Kid’s gonna be something.

He breaks into the upper-city library that night, snatching everything he can.

* * *

 

Killer’s still nineteen when two boys pull him into an alley and tug at his clothes. He shoves at them and gets a kick in return- don’t they fucking know who he is?

He’s got his nails in a throat soon enough, teeth tearing at skin and Kid is there at the mouth of that alley, gaping slightly as Killer hovers over those whimpering bodies, lips tasting like copper.

Kid is fifteen when he crouches there before Killer, the darkness bringing out the whites in his eyes.

“What was your name again?”

“Killer.”

* * *

 

“They bother you so much cause you look like that.”

Kid is there in his little hole, had been for the past few weeks, always bringing home pieces of everything so as to make something else.

Killer had been cornered the day before. They were getting bold, these older kids. Were the rumors of him no longer terrifying?

“What do you mean by that?”

He’s there in his own little corner, a thick book in his hands.

Kid tinkers with this little contraption he’s got going on, these large goggles slipping down his nose. “Cause you look like a fucking girl. You’re all skinny and blonde and pretty. The only thing that keeps most of them back is your habit in chewing them up.”

Killer scrunches his face up into something ugly. “You’re lying.”

Kid scoffs, glaring over at him with a screwdriver in his hand, brows raised indignantly over his goggles, “Why the fuck would I lie.”

Killer swipes his bangs back irately. “Is that what they think? I should rip out their eyes next.”

Kid huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah? And what about my eyes?”

Killer’s drawn away from his book for the second time that day, though Kid continues messing around.

Kid is sixteen and notorious. Kid is sixteen and Killer realizes then that he’s never been with a girl, that he’s grown and curious and the only person he ever talks to is Killer.

“You want to go to a brothel? You’re of age, and it ain’t too expensive.”

Kid flinches like he’d just been hit, and he slips his goggles down to stare at Killer. “Is that what you did when you were sixteen?”

Yeah, but for some reason he didn't want to say that.

Kid seems to know, lips curling before he’s standing up, shoulders tense. “That’s disgusting, you know how many diseases they got, you know how many people they screw?”

Killer cocks his head, completely and utterly perplexed by this kid.

He watches him leave, and decides that yes, this kid was going to be something someday.

* * *

 

Killer doesn’t need saving. He’s apt enough nowadays, twenty and agile. But there’s been a shift in the city, a terrible topple in power as pirates stake their flag at the docks and up again where the nobles used to lived.

They’d all been hung out to dry in the streets, those nobles, bloody and torn.

Lawlessness is now the law.

Kid takes a good look at the well-fed and the well-kept, stands there and looks up at them real thoughtful like.

"Killer,” he murmurs, “let’s be pirates.”

Whatever you want.

Kid has these dangerous eyes to him now, and so when some of those lackeys push past Killer, hissing at him only to pause at his longer hair and sharp collar bones, Killer doesn’t even have to think about retaliating.

Kid’s gaze twitches and those men are on the ground, their own daggers plunged into the back of their skulls.

“Killer.”

The blonde feels the twist of a smile. “Aye aye.”

* * *

 

Kid doesn’t like it when people look at Killer. He doesn’t like it when their gazes linger. Killer can’t understand it, with his dirty, messy hair and his gangly body.

Kid starts saying nonsense, about marking up his face so no one will want him and Killer clicks his tongue in annoyance each and every time, saying he isn’t going to change himself for others.

But Kid seems to believe that the city was becoming more and more dangerous for Killer. It annoyed him. He was four years older and well-read. He didn’t need the little devil-fruit user monitoring him.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

Killer tenses up, lips parted just slightly at Kid’s bold statement.

“Okay.”

He’s twenty-one and this seventeen year old is now on his knees and slouching over him, pressing him back even further against the wall with these intense eyes.

And then he’s kissing him, a little off at first, but he’s insistent, his fingers threading into Killer’s, raising them up and pressing them against the wall too.

Killer had known, had recognized Kid’s possessiveness. And he didn’t mind it, no, because Kid was becoming stronger, faster, smarter. He had this intuition about people, could read them even if he didn’t always mind his own instincts.

One time Killer had read him something, an old article about Gol D. Roger. That was the first time Kid had ever truly taken an interest in something.

“I’m going to find One Piece,” the younger boy murmurs against his lips, “I’m going to be pirate king.”

Killer believes him.

“What about me?”

Kid is so close to him, and Killer knows what he wants.

“You? You’ll be right there beside me, though I don’t know if I want everyone seeing what’s mine.”

* * *

 

The New World is brutal, just the way Kid likes it.

Killer’s careful with the brush, just as he always is.

“You’re too good at that.”

Kid looks kinda scary now, with these great jagged, fleshy scars dripping down his face and these wild eyes to him.

He’s painting Kid’s nails, just as he always does. “And you like it.”

“Of course I fucking do.”

Once he caps the polish Kid brings him into for a rough kiss, and Killer takes that great scary face of his and smiles, wondering when that stupid little boy had become so fucking awesome.


End file.
